Video: Drunk Off-duty Cops Beat Pranksters For Playing With Them With Their Water Guns

Six pranksters have been violently beaten and charged by police in the city of Minneapolis for creating a prank against occupants of pedal pub with their water guns.

It is said all six were booked into the Hennepin County jail and were allowed to post relatively small bail amounts despite the fact that they were charged with fifth-degree assault and disorderly conduct.

Pedal Pubs are known as bikes with a barrel because of its mobile outdoor nature and it is said they have been anti-pedal pub sentiments recently in the Twin Cities.

The Twin Cities Facebook page reported that pranksters had planned to gather at Loring Park where “they were going to pull a ‘Mad Max’ on the Pedal Pub with water balloons and squirt guns”.

According to the manager of Twin Cities Pedal Pubs- Lisa Stanplin, they received a call from Pedal Pub drivers in downtown Minneapolis both in rapid succession. One driver had been squirted in the face by the pranksters who were using bicycles with their water gun. Another driver also called to say a passenger on the pedal pub had been also squirted. Lisa said they then considered it a serious matter.

“It’s a safety issue. They created an unsafe, potentially dangerous situation. Our pilots have all been trained to deal with incidents like this. They all know 911 is the first recourse if they’re dealing with people harassing them in any way, shape or form”, she explained.

Meanwhile, in a sharp contrast to the account given by Lisa, Susan Du of blogs.citypages.com/ wrote that “The group rode on, rounding the corner to find another Pedal Pub, then a third. They hit each, earning good-natured high fives and cheers. ‘Squirt us, squirt us!’ the passengers called. They regrouped by Target Field for a couple delicious American-made tobacco products, and then headed over to the Memory Lanes Block Party. On the way, they saw yet another Pedal Pub. They decided to stage a final water attack, riding around the block to meet it head-on”.

But what the Pranksters didn’t know is that some of the passengers on the pedal pub were off-duty cops who were very drunk. One of the pranksters who identified himself as Johnson said he veered close because his dollar-store water gun barely had the launching power to spray two feet. He squirted a line of people. Then, the officers jumped from the moving pub and started beating them. The officers described them as “attackers.” One of the pranksters was taken to the emergency room because of the beating he sustained.

Burnsville Police Chief-Eric Gieseke later confirmed to reporters that there were half a dozen of his off-duty officers on board the pedal pub.

“While all this went down, they took our squirt guns and smashed them. They looked like they were in a WWE production or something, swinging it over their heads and crushing it on the ground. I realized that they were overpowering me, and I just laid there. I had three people sitting on me, and I could hardly breathe. They got mad at me for picking one of them up so I could breathe. I was like..You need to get off my lungs”, Johnson said about his suffering.

Johnson said when the police finally arrived and they were arrested, one officer said ‘In this day and age, people will think maybe it’s not water in there.’ And Johnson said he replied ‘Sir, those sorts of ideas are creating a police state that instills fear’.

Source: http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/06/cops-kids-with-squirt-guns/